Chapter Text
The mirrors in the penthouse have been covered for the past three months, and though he knows that perhaps he should check his appearance he can’t force himself to meet his own eyes. As he is thinking that perhaps it might be worth it, if only so that his PR agent doesn’t bitch at him, he curls and uncurls the fingers of his right hand. He’d lied to her, to Ross, to anyone who had asked, and told them that he’d had an accident down at the lab. That the cuts on his knuckles had come from banging out the Iron Man suit after his latest assignment. Nobody needs to know that as soon as he’d looked at his face in the last uncovered mirror he hadn’t been able to stand the asshole that stared back at him and had taken a page out of someone else’s book and punched the glass.
He’d banned anyone from coming to his penthouse since then, and avoided having to see what he was turning into when he was forced out of the solace of the tower. There was nobody to check on him, anyway, so avoidance had suddenly become a lot easier. He leans against the counter in his bathroom for a second longer, breathes a slow exhale and ghosts his fingers over the center of his chest before he tells himself to man up. C’mon, Anthony, the voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his father grunts at him, man up. Do your damned job.
So that’s exactly what he does. Puts himself together, wills the excess of himself that keeps bursting at the seams, and gets out of the bathroom. Methodically, he picks up his watch and his wallet and makes his way to the garage. FRIDAY is mournfully silent as he goes, wishes him a quiet good luck that makes him close his eyes and wish for sarcasm and a British accent, and gets into his car. Nobody drives him anymore; Happy having left along with Pepper at Tony’s request. He avoids his eyes in the rearview mirror and revs out of the Tower’s garage.
After all, pardons don’t award themselves.
Ross, as always, is a piece of shit. Tony is so very glad that this might be the last meeting he will ever have to see the son of a bitch’s smarmy face. His pocket feels heavy where his phone, and all its secrets, rests. He fakes smiles and shakes the hands of every dirty politician he knows. He shares more genuine greetings with the few world leaders he actually is in good standing in, and humbles his expression with the ones he doesn’t. He sees King T’Challa across the room, and when their gazes meet Tony drops his own. They might have been working toward the same goal, aided by a redheaded shadow, but old habits die hard. And holding pain and anger in is a very old habit for him.
So he avoids T’Challa until the last possible second, but makes sure that he is cordial to him when they have to confer. He keeps the skepticism he feels about this meeting to himself, though he guesses the king knows. It’s all the same, Tony supposes, seeing as T’Challa thinks he can keep his guests from Tony in return. They exchange quick last minute instructions for each other, and then they are being escorted into the latest UN meetings about the accords.
Ross, as always, is sitting in a place of prominence. Where he can direct and control the way that the meetings, and by extension the faith of Tony’s friends, go. Tony’s hand goes to his pocket, where it curls around his phone, and he gives a predatory grin to the General. Underhanded and dirty has never been his style, he had always preferred to go for the direct approach, but he’s learned in the past few months since Ross came to him with the Accords. He can swim as well as any of the sharks now, and if there is anything that his father and godfather hand taught him, it was to be the best at everything you learned.
The room is silent after T’Challa and Tony finish, for lack of a better word, dropping the bomb. It starts simply enough, with T’Challa voicing his concerns about certain aspects of the Accords, such as the measures that the governments would take if someone stepped out of line. Ross is quick to inform the King, somewhat condescendingly, that they would be subjected to fair trial. The grin the Wakandan King gives him in return is feral.
It’s all downhill from there. Similar to how things went with the team, Tony does nothing but watch the progression of things. T’Challa brings forth the arrest of the former Avengers and the, surprisingly enough, lack of fair trial. He brings forth the footage of the Raft and the conditions under which Wanda, unfortunately a legal adult though young nonetheless, was kept by Ross’s orders. The General turns back, furious, to seek Tony but all he does is stare defiantly back. Tony isn’t just buying the Avengers’ freedom here, after all.
“Mr. Stark?” T’Challa’s voice breaks him from his reverie.
Tony looks up at him, and is surprised to see something like concern in the younger man. He must be imagining things, he convinces himself, and raises to his feet. He can feel Ross’s dark glare on his back as he takes the podium. This is for you, Tony thinks as he begins his speech. He pulls up the pictures, the documents, the uncovered footage and glimpses of conversation. The final nail in the Accords coffin, thank God. This is for you and thanks to you, Brucie-bear.
He hopes that Bruce, wherever he is, will know that he’s hopefully finally getting it right. That, after everything that Tony has done wrong for him and the whole team, trusting him with this information about his past wasn’t a mistake. He hopes, perhaps vainly, that at least this is a bridge he can save.
Life after that is… pandemonium, to put it bluntly. There are law suits and investigations and accusations and all sorts of legalese Tony can barely keep up with. Through everything, Rhodey proves to be a rock. After that first UN meeting, which is later on dubbed D-Day for Destruction Day, Rhodey makes it his mission to be with Tony at all times. His exoskeleton is working as well as it should, he says, and he’s made leaps and bounds with his therapy. He’s ready to kick ass, he convinces Tony who honestly didn’t fight it very much. He’s feeling the strain of it, every day, and had been wishing for some sort of respite from it all.
It seems like there’s someone watching out for it because it’s only been about two weeks after shit has hit the fan when Tasha shows up. Ross and Zemo are in custody, the Accords are on the process of being amended though both Tony and T’Challa are hopeful that they will be destroyed all together, and pardons are being written. He’s barely slept since the whole ordeal started and he knows his shaking is more than just nervousness, but he trudges on every day.
He’s barely eating.
He can’t sleep.
He’s gaunt and bony and overrun. Extremis is barely keeping up with the strain of it all, and he’s not making it simpler, but he can’t help it. Workaholic behavior seems to be engrained in his DNA the same way alcoholism was, apparently. He knows none of the others will be able to help him, give him any sort of respite, but at least it’s nice to know that there is more people with some experience dealing with bureaucratic bullshit.
They (Tony, Rhodey, Vision and T’Challa) are discussing the latest developments in the UN meetings they’ve been having to attend when she casually strolls into the communal living room of the facility. How she’d known where to find them, nobody asks. T’Challa gives her a warm smile, while Vision and Rhodey merely glance wearily at her. Rhodey more than the others seems a bit more hostile. Tony glances at her for a second, then looks back down at the papers in his hands. Suddenly what seems so urgent mere moments before becomes unimportant then.
“It’s late,” he finds himself saying to the others. He doesn’t acknowledge her presence. “I think we can file this away until tomorrow. That’s two down, so that leaves us four to go. Won’t be much longer now.”
Rhodey, bless him, doesn’t call him on his avoidance bullshit. Merely claps a hand on Tony’s shoulder and pulls him to his feet. “C’mon, man,” he says quietly. Tony gives him a grateful little twitch of his lips and follows him.
“Not now, Ms. Romanov,” he hears T’Challa’s quiet voice say behind him.
He closes his eyes for a moment as he lets Rhodey lead him to his room. He’ll pretend to go to sleep for a while, to appease his brother, then he can sneak out to the lab. He can work on the schematics for the exoskeleton for a bit before he attempts sleep. Or maybe he’ll decide to sack the whole thing and finally blow the suits to kingdom come. He can’t really decide which one would be more painful at this point.
“Mr. Stark! How does it feel being an Avenger again?!
Mr. Stark! Are you aware of Spider-Man’s identity?
Tony! Are the pardons just a way to sway the public?
Tony, would you say that you were wrong about the accords?!
Mr. Stark, will you be attending Ross’s trial?!
Mr. Stark! How do you respond to the accusations that you’d always known about General Ross’s crimes?!
Tony, what do you have to say about the accusations of war-mongering against you?!
Mr. Stark! Will you still go to trial for what happened in Sokovia?!
Mr. Stark! Since the Avengers have disbanded, will you be facing trial for what happened in Lagos and Germany?!
Mr. Stark! Can you ensure the safety of American citizens now that the Avengers team has been cut to less than half its size?!
Mr. Stark, would you say that the rift between you and the other Avengers was worth it?
Tony, was it worth it?
Was it?
Was
It
Worth
It?!”
“Enough!” Rhodey’s loud voice in his ear pulls Tony out of the reverie. They’re still trying to push their way towards the Bentley Happy is currently waiting in. God, he should have tried to find a back door or something. His temples pound with the horrible migraine he’s been having since the beginning of that day.
He’d known, of course he had, that this final piece of his puzzle would call forth the most attention. Nobody had really batted an eye at the first set of pardons (Clint had been out of public eye enough and nobody really cared about Lang’s petty theft, and Sam was decorated serviceman,) the rest though. Stev—Cap, may have been America’s golden boy at one point but after New York and especially Leipzig, his reputation had been shot all to hell. The Maximoff girl and Barnes had been even worse.
But they’d done it, and he was damn proud of them for doing so. T’Challa shouldered his way past the reporters, and Rhodey shoved him none too gently towards the car. He could still hear them hollering, and all he wanted to do was curl up on himself for a minute and put his head between his knees. He just needed to find a way to breathe for a second.
Once in the car, he leaned back against the seat and let out a gusty sigh. He tried to block the reporters out, but suddenly it seemed that they had begun to chant the same thing. He knew it was his mind playing tricks on him, but he still couldn’t help listening to it. it had been the same question he had been making himself since it all happened. It was the reason he couldn’t look himself in the eye anymore.
WAS IT WORTH IT?
“Mr. Stark?” the voice breaks when it says his name. It trembles, as if unsure on how to talk to Tony. He closes his eyes tightly for a second before hissing out a curse. His mouth is cottony-dry and there is an insistent pounding on his right temple. His stomach growls, though he feels the taste of bile in the back of his throat. Jesus.
“Mr. Stark?” again the same voice, though a little higher than before. The concern is clear, and Tony makes an effort to unstick his face from his worktable top. He realizes he’s in the same suit from the day before, though thankfully he’d shed the jacket and the tie somewhere along the way. The voice is starting to sound familiar, and though his brain is still sluggish, a part of him knows that he needs to get it together.
“Mmm, I hear you,” he mumbles and finally manages to push himself back. He’s immediately assaulted with a pair of puppy eyes. Brown and concerned in a face that can’t be older than sixteen, and a mop of wild chocolate curls. Tony blinks at the kid for a second, going from why the fuck is there a child in a workshop to aww shit, Pete, you’re not supposed to ever see me like this. “Oh, hey, kid,” he finally says with false bravado.
Peter’s wide eyes move from Tony’s face to the empty bottle of rum to his right, and the engineer winces. Christ, he’s just as bad as Howard ever was. Why he thought playing house with Peter was ever a good idea, he doesn’t know. Though, looking at the lost kid in front of him, he knows exactly why he offered the Parker kid help. He should have known he’d fuck it up somehow, though.
“How’d you get in here?” he says, and subtly tries to move the kid’s attention from the alcoholic disaster that is his life. he stretches as much as he can in his stuffy shirt, and then slumps back into the chair as his body seems to give out. Jesus, he’s tired, and sleeping in the shop didn’t do his back any favors.
“Colonel Rhodes called me,” he says quietly. His eyes move around the room, and when they land on DUM-E, his whole face lights up. Tony watches him move towards the bot before seemingly remembering where he is, and most importantly who he’s with. He glances back guiltily at Tony. “He said maybe I should come for a visit.”
He thinks you can fix me, Tony says in his mind. He knows its not possible; there have been plenty of people who have tried. Pepper lasted the longest, but even she couldn’t stand all the baggage that came with loving Tony Stark. Not even the epitome of human perfection could apparently do that. He wants to throttle Rhodes a bit. Peter is a kid, someone who had already waded into too much of their shit to be dragged in again. Tony has already done the kid a disservice by making him and unofficial Avenger. Despite how desperate he had been, to bring the others in and prove to Ross and the UN that there were good super powered people out there, he never should have brought the kid. Sure, he was able to pick his battles, had already been doing it every day in his ridiculous pajamas, and Tony knew he could never tell Peter what to do… it still had felt wrong. It had still made him keep an eye on the kid while they fought the Avengers, and wasn’t that just the kicker? He had never expected the others to actually fight them.
He grabs onto the edges of the table for a second as he remembers the avalanche of cars dropping over him. The scene too reminiscent of the Malibu house falling on top of him while the suit was down. Punctured and shutting down, and he couldn’t breathe, God, he couldn’t breathe and there was debris on top of him, and everything was dark and he couldn’t do anything…
“Tony!” he jumps back at the sound of the voice. all sharp edges and worry, and there at hands on his shoulders that are gripping him a little too tight, but that’s okay because that lets him concentrate on being grounded. Here, not under the water or cars or a fucking cave in Afghanistan. He’s there, in New York, in a building that no longer feels like home but where he at least knows nobody is currently actively trying to kill him. “You’re okay, Tony.” Peter looks infinitely worried for him, despite everything that he’s done to the kid, and it breaks a bit of Tony away.
He’d always known he’d be as much of a shitty parent as Howard.
Peter takes a step back and pulls a chair close to Tony. He doesn’t say anything, and he gives Tony the space to try to control himself. God, he’s so goddamn tired of fucking everything up. He should be the one to be strong. He should be the one to ask Peter how he’s doing; with spider-man, his biology club, his SAT preps, that asshole kid Flash, hell, even about Gwendolyn. He should be the one to man up and make sure that the kid is okay.
C’mon, Anthony, Stark men are made of iron.
“Hey,” he finds himself saying after moments of deliberation. “You wanna meet DUM-E?” he winces at how idiotic he sounds. He was supposed to be making this about Peter not himself. Of course, everyone always said that that’s all he’s always done.
He’s about to retract when he sees the giddy excitement on Peter’s face. It’s like someone told the kid all his projects would be funded for the rest of his life. Which, they are, but Tony hasn’t gotten around to telling him that quite yet. The kid nods his head, making him look like a bobble headed doll, and Tony finds himself smiling.
As he stands there, watching a clearly excited Peter give a preening DUM-E a fist bump in greeting, something warm settles in Tony’s chest. He’s still furious for calling the kid. Furious at himself for mixing him up in all their shit, but perhaps he can still manage to turn their relationship around. And, maybe, Peter will end up teaching Tony a thing or two.
Yeah, he thinks as Peter laughs while DUM-E tugs at the strings of his hoodie, maybe.